Really! A week ago – on Wednesday, February 25 – my wife and I saw blue forms – not exactly squiggles, what artists call “biomorphic forms” – forms that suggest living shapes.We saw shapes suggesting the human form -glowing blue shapes – shift, glide, float, zoom in a dark space. These blue shapes glowed as they moved individually or in combination.
We saw a performance by the Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, an even in Missouri S&T’s Campus Performing Arts series in Leach Theatre. The company performed three pieces, each quite different from the other.
The first, “Sweet Fields,” choreographed by Twyla Tharp, used music from William Billings, the Shaker tradition, and Sacred Harp, a shape-note hymnal. The second, “1st Flash,” choreographed by Jorma Elo, to music by Jean Sibelius,
The third, Noir Blanc, is the one my opening paragraph deals with – a performance that is a culmination of movement arts over the last 100 years. (I’m thinking of Diaghilev and Nijinsky.) Those float blue biomorphs, were, of course, the dances of Aspen Santa Fe Ballet. The skillful use of costuming and lighting gave the audience an experience difficult to represent in words. So I will stop with that; no, let me add that, if you have the opportunity to see this ballet company perform, I recommend that you do just that.